
Current Affairs
As for the left, it’s not clear who the urbanists are anymore. Perhaps a new anti-sprawl coalition can emerge. If it does, it must move beyond cynicism about centralization and fetishes for markets and recognize that fixing the vast amounts of sprawl we’ve built—especially given its dire effects on the climate and on public health—requires some centralized coordination, but from a government equipped to protect the public good over the whims of rapacious plutocrats who are busier than ever dismantling our public institutions and cheapening what scraps of American public life still remain.